Veil of Midnight (19 page)

“How was your rest?” he asked Niko with a polite smile. “Perhaps you’re ready to chat with me now. Just the two of us this time, what do you say?”

126

“Fuck you,” Nikolai growled through his extended fangs. “I didn’t kill Yakut. I told you what happened. You arrested the wrong guy, asshole.”

Fabien chuckled as he walked to the side of the bed and stared down at him. “There was no mistake, warrior. And I personally could give a damn whether or not you were the one who blew that Gen One’s brains all over his walls. I have other, more important questions to ask you. Questions you
will
answer, if your life means anything to you at all.”

That this male evidently knew he was a member of the Order put a dangerous new spin on Nikolai’s incarceration. As did the evil glimmer in those shrewd raptorlike eyes.

“What exactly does the Order know about the other Gen One assassinations?”

Nikolai glared up at him, silent, jaw set tight.

“Do you really think you can do anything to stop them? Do you think the Order is so powerful that it can keep the wheel from turning when it’s been in motion secretly for years already?” The Breed male’s lips spread into a caricature of a smile. “We will exterminate you one by one, just as we are doing with the last remaining members of the first generation. Everything is in place, and has been for a long time. The revolution, you see, has already begun.”

Rage coiled in Nikolai’s gut as he realized just what he was hearing.

“You son of a bitch. You’re with Dragos.”

“Ah…now you begin to understand,” Fabien said pleasantly.

“You’re a fucking traitor to your own race, that’s what I understand.”

The facade of civil behavior fell away like a mask. “I want you to tell me about the Order’s current missions. Who are your allies? What do you know about the assassinations? What are the Order’s plans where Dragos is concerned?”

Nikolai sneered. “Blow me. Tell your boss he can blow me too.”

127

Fabien’s cruel eyes narrowed. “You have tested my patience long enough.”

He got up and walked to the door. A curt wave of his hand brought the guard on duty inside. “Yes, sir?”

“It is time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The guard nodded and disappeared, only to return a moment later. He and a facility attendant wheeled in a woman strapped to a narrow bed. She’d been sedated as well, and wore only a thin, sleeveless hospital gown. Lying beside her was a tourniquet, a package of thick needles, and a coiled IV tube.

What the hell was this about?

But he knew. He knew as soon as the attendant lifted the human’s limp arm and fixed the tourniquet around the area of her brachial artery. The needle and siphoning tube were next.

Nikolai tried to ignore the clinical process taking place beside him, but even the subtlest scent of blood made his senses fire up like holiday lights. Saliva surged into his mouth. His fangs stretched longer in anticipation of feeding.

He didn’t want to hunger—not like this, not when he was certain Fabien intended to use it against him now. He tried to ignore his thirst but it was already rising, responding to the visceral urge to feed.

Fabien and the other two vampires in the room were not immune either. The attendant worked expediently, the guard keeping his distance near the door while Fabien watched the blood Host being readied for the feeding. Once everything was in place, Fabien dismissed the attendant and sent the guard back to his post outside.

“Hungry, are we?” he asked Niko when the others had gone. He held the feeding tube in one hand, the fingers of his other hand poised on the valve that would begin the flow of blood from the woman’s arm. “You know, this is the only way to feed a Rogue vampire in containment. Blood intake must be closely monitored, controlled by trained attendants.

128

Too little and he starves; too much and his addiction becomes stronger. Bloodlust is a terrible thing, don’t you agree?”

Niko snarled, wanting so badly to leap up off the bed and strangle Fabien. He struggled to do just that, but it was a futile effort. The combination of sedatives and steel restraints held him down. “I’ll kill you,” he muttered, breathless from exertion. “I promise you, I will fucking kill you.”

“No,” Fabien said. “It is you who’s going to die. Unless you start talking now, I’m going to put this tube down your throat and open the valve. I won’t shut it off until you indicate that you’re ready to cooperate.”

Jesus Christ. He was threatening to overdose him. No Breed vampire could handle that much blood at once. It would mean almost certain Bloodlust. He would turn Rogue, a one-way ticket to misery, madness, and death.

“Would you like to talk now, or shall we begin?”

He wasn’t idiot enough to think Fabien or his cronies would release him, even if he did cough up details about the Order’s tactics and current missions. Hell, he could have a rock-solid guarantee of walking away free, but he’d be damned if he’d betray his brethren just to save his own neck.

So, this was it, then. He’d often wondered how he would check out. Figured he’d go down in a blaze of glory, a hail of bullets and shrapnel, hopefully taking a dozen suckheads with him. He never guessed it would be something as pitiful as this. The only honor in it was the fact that he would die keeping the Order’s secrets.

“Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?” Fabien asked.

“Fuck off,” Niko ground out, more pissed than ever. “You and Dragos both can go straight to hell.”

Fabien’s gaze sparked with rage. He forced Nikolai’s mouth open and shoved the feeding tube deep into his throat. His esophagus constricted, but even his gag reflex was weak due to the sedatives coursing through his body.

129

There was a soft click as the valve on the human’s arm was opened.

Blood gushed into the back of Nikolai’s mouth. He choked on it, tried to close his throat and refuse it, but there was too much—an endless flow that pumped swiftly from the blood Host’s tapped artery.

Niko had no choice but to swallow.

He gulped down the first mouthful. Then another.

And still more.

* * *

Andreas Reichen was in his Darkhaven office reviewing accounts and downloading the morning’s e-mail when he noticed the message waiting in his in-box from Helene. The subject was a simple handful of words that made his pulse kick with interest:
found a name for you.

He clicked open the e-mail and read her brief note.

After some determined investigative work, Helene had gotten the name of the vampire her missing club girl had been seeing recently.

Wilhelm Roth.

Reichen read it twice, every molecule in his bloodstream growing colder as the name sank into his brain.

Helene’s e-mail indicated that she was still digging for more information and would report back as soon as she had anything further.

Jesus.

She couldn’t know the true nature of the viper she’d uncovered, but Reichen knew plenty.

Wilhelm Roth, the leader of the Hamburg Darkhaven and one of the most powerful individuals in Breed society. Wilhelm Roth, a gangster of the first degree, and someone whom Reichen knew very well, or had at one time.

130

Wilhelm Roth, who was mated to a former lover of Reichen’s—the woman who’d taken a piece of Reichen’s heart when she left him to be with the wealthy, second-generation Breed male who could give her all the things Reichen could not.

If Helene’s vanished employee had been associated with Roth, it was certain the girl was dead by now. And Helene…good Christ. She was already too close to the bastard just by having learned his name. If she got any closer by continuing to look for information on him…?

Reichen picked up the phone and dialed her cell. No answer. He tried her flat in the city, cursing when the call went into voicemail. It was much too early for her to be at the club, but he dialed it anyway, damning the daylight that kept him trapped in his Darkhaven and unable to drive over to speak with her in person.

When all his options failed, Reichen fired back a response via email.

Do nothing more where Roth is concerned. He is dangerous. Contact
me as soon as you receive this message. Helene, please…be careful.

* * *

A medical equipment truck came to a halt at the gated entrance of an unassuming, two-story brick building some forty-five minutes outside the heart of Montreal. The driver leaned out his window and typed a short sequence into an electronic keypad located on the security kiosk outside. After a moment or two, the gate opened and the truck rolled inside.

It must be delivery day; this was the second supply vehicle Renata had observed entering or leaving the nondescript location since she’d arrived a short time ago. She had spent most of the day in the city, hiding out in Lex’s car while she recovered from the worst of her reverb from the morning. Now it was late afternoon. She wouldn’t have long—just a few short hours before dusk fell and the night grew thick with predators. Not long at all before she became the hunted.

She had to make the most of that time, which is why she found herself staked out down the road from the isolated, camera-monitored

131

gate of a peculiar building in the town of Terrabonne. It had no windows, no signage out front. Although she couldn’t be certain, her gut instinct was telling her that the squat slab of concrete and brick at the end of a private access road was the place Lex had mentioned—the containment facility where Nikolai had been taken.

She prayed it was, because at the moment, the warrior was the only thing close to an ally she had, and if she wanted to find Mira—if she stood any chance of retrieving the child from the vampire who had her now—she knew that she couldn’t do it alone. But that meant finding Nikolai first, and praying she found him alive.

And if he was dead? Or if he was alive but refused to help her? Or decided to kill her outright for her role in his wrongful arrest?

Well, Renata didn’t want to consider where any of those potentials would leave her. Worse, where they would leave an innocent child who depended on Renata to keep her safe.

So, she waited and she watched, calculating a way past the security gate. Another supply truck rolled up to the entrance. It came to a stop and Renata seized the opportunity.

Jumping out of Lex’s car and running low to the ground, she raced up along the back of the vehicle. While the driver punched in his access code, she hopped up on the rear bumper. The trailer doors were locked, but she slipped her fingers around the handles and held on as the gate clattered open and the truck lurched through.

The driver swung around to the back of the building, following a stretch of asphalt that led to a pair of shipping and receiving bays. Renata climbed up to the roof of the trailer and hung on tight as the truck turned around and began to back into an empty dock. As it neared the building, a motion sensor clicked and the receiving door lifted. There was no one waiting as daylight filled the hangarlike opening, but then if the place was held by the Breed, anyone manning this area would be turning crispy after just a few minutes on the job.

Once the truck backed inside completely, the big door started to descend. There was a second of darkness between the closing of the bay and the electronic flutter of the overhead fluorescent lights coming on. Renata scrambled down and leapt off the rear bumper just as the driver

132

got out of the truck. And now, coming out of a steel door on the other side of the space, was a muscular man in a dark military-style uniform.

The same kind of uniform as the ones worn by the Enforcement Agents Lex had called to arrest Nikolai last night. Complete with a semiautomatic pistol holstered at his hip.

“Hey, how’s it going?” the driver called out to the guard.

Renata crept around the side of the truck before the vampire or the human could spot her. She waited, listening to the jangle of the lock being freed. When the guard got closer, she sent him a little hello of her own, a mental jolt that made him rock back on his heels. Another small blast had him staggering. He clutched his temples in his hands and gasped a vivid curse.

The human driver turned to look after him. “Whoa. You okay there, buddy?”

The brief inattention was all the opportunity Renata needed. She dashed silently across the wide bay and slipped inside the access door the guard had left unsecured.

She ducked past an empty office containing a workstation with monitors displaying the gated entrance. Beyond that, a narrow hallway offered two possibilities: a bend that appeared to lead toward the front of the building or, farther down the hall, a stairwell to the second floor.

Renata opted for the stairs. She hurried toward them, past the spoke that branched off to the side. Another guard was in that stretch of hallway.

Damn it.

He saw her rush by. His boots thundered closer.

“Stop!” he shouted, coming around the corner of the corridor. “This is a restricted area—”

Renata pivoted and took him down with a hard mental blast. As he writhed on the floor, she gunned it into the stairwell and raced up the flight to the floor above.